Archive for the ‘VAGINA & UTERUS’ Category

Human rigts lawyer David Matas has spoken out about organ harvesting in China.

China’s hospitals are harvesting the body parts of thousands of political prisoners and removing their vital organs while they are still alive, according to a harrowing documentary exposing the horrific state-sanctioned practice.

Doctors and medical students working in state-run civilian and military hospitals take up to 11,000 organs a year from donors under no anaesthetic to supply China’s lucrative “organs on-demand” transplant program, say a network of invesitgators comprised of international researchers, doctors and human rights lawyers attempting to end the macabre abuses.

The documentary, Human Harvest: China’s Organ Trafficking, by Canadian filmmaker Leon Lee, followed these investigators for eight years as they worked to mobilise international condemnation of what they say is a booming billion-dollar organ harvesting industry for the benefit of wealthy paying organ recipients.

“When I cut through [the body] blood was still running … this person was not dead,” said one doctor of his first encounter with live organ harvesting as a medical student filmed by Lee.

“I took the liver and two kidneys. It took me 30 minutes,” he said.

A former Chinese hospital worker and doctor’s wife, whose identity was withheld, told Lee that her husband had removed the corneas of 2000 people while they were still alive. Afterwards the bodies were secretly incinerated.

China has the second highest rate of transplants in the world, with startlingly short wait times for transplant recipients of just two to three weeks.

But a recent Red Cross report found only 37 people nationwide were registered organ donors and harvesting organs from executed prisoners did not come close to accounting for the more than 10,000 transplant procedures performed every year.

Human Rights Lawyer and nobel peace prize nominee David Matas told Lee that living political prisoners make up for the shortfall, with the long-persecuted and banned religious group, the Falun Gong, key targets

.

“Somebody’s being killed for the organs,” human rights lawyer David Matas says.

“There’s no other way to explain what’s happening.”

Chinese officials have denied the allegations, claiming organ donors are volunteers. However, under China’s president Xi Jinping, the government has vowed the program would we wound up by August this year, hanging the blame on former security chief Zhou Yongkang.

But Matas and his colleagues are pushing for the perpetrators to stand before the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity.

AIRPORT screenings can give you a sexually transmitted disease
You could pick up a sex disease on your next trip – and you don’t even have to visit a hooker in a foreign city to get it.

Just a visit to the airport will do, because the perverted American government is spreading germs as it forces passengers to spread for its new “enhanced security screenings.”

You’ve probably heard a bit about these government-sanctioned gropings. One TV news producer singled out for a special pat down said the agent stuck a hand inside her pants and even felt around inside her panties.

“It was basically worse than going to the gynecologist,” she said. “It was embarrassing. It was demeaning. It was inappropriate.”

It’s also a very real public health threat.

The TV news producer didn’t mention the rubber gloves worn by the screeners, but there have been multiple reports of Transportation Security Admininstration (TSA) workers using the same gloves from one passenger to the next.

And that means every visit with a TSA worker could be like a quick dip in a Tijuana whorehouse – because these guys could be passing out everything from herpes to the crabs all day and night.

That’s a bigger threat to passenger safety than any wannabe terrorist!

A breast cancer survivor was forced to remove her prosthetic breast. A bladder cancer survivor was left covered in his own urine when TSA workers caused his urostomy bag to burst. Children have been screaming through some very personal lessons in “bad touch.”

And in one case, a nursing mother who complained to the TSA after agents X-rayed bottles of pumped breast milk was singled out for retaliatory extra screening during her next trip.

Unequal access drives fertility tourism, experts say

LONDON, Sep. 14, 2010 (Reuters) — Patients who cross borders in search of cheaper, more available fertility treatment can now choose from more than 100 countries but may be putting themselves and their babies at risk, experts said Tuesday.

Nurses display quadruplet baby girls born by caesarean section at Pringadi hospital in Medan, North Sumatra September 29, 2009. REUTERS/Stringer

The European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology (ESHRE) and the International Federation of Fertility Societies (IFFS) said a survey of reproductive services showed wide disparities between laws and practice in many countries. As a result, patients returning home may face legal or medical problems.

“Although in principle the care of foreign and local patients should essentially be the same and fit the best possible standards, there is evidence that it is not always so,” ESHRE’s Francoise Shenfield told reporters at a briefing.

A survey of 105 countries by the IFFS found that cultural, religious and social differences in attitudes to fertility treatments such as using donated eggs, sperm or embryos mean there are wide variations in the number of clinics that offer treatment, and the services they provide.

In vitro fertilization (IVF) involves removing eggs from a woman’s ovaries and combining them with sperm in a lab. The strongest embryos are then implanted into a woman’s womb. In theory, the eggs, sperm and embryos can all be donated.

The IFFS survey found there are over 500 fertility clinics in India and about 615 in Japan, but only 66 in Britain, 120 in Germany, 200 in Spain and around 360 in Italy.

IFFS education director Ian Cooke said discrepancies in access prompted patients to travel abroad for treatment, but could leave them in medical, financial or legal difficulties.

LEGAL DIFFERENCES

One major problem is the rules on the maximum number of embryos that can be transferred to a woman’s womb after IVF.

In Britain and Scandinavia only one or two are allowed, but other countries have higher limits or none at all — a factor that can increase the number of multiple pregnancies that can pose risks for both mothers and babies.

Freezing embryos is banned in Germany, Italy and Croatia, but freezing eggs before they are fertilized is allowed. In Britain the removal of donors’ anonymity has led to a severe shortage in donated sperm.

Sperm and egg donation is banned completely in many Islamic countries, and in France lesbians are not allowed access to donated sperm. Turkey has recently banned anyone going abroad to receive donated sperm or eggs — a law which the experts said was almost completely unenforceable.

“If a woman goes on holiday and comes back pregnant, who is to tell exactly how or when she got pregnant?” said Shenfield.

Both IFFS and ESHRE support the rights of patients to travel to receive fertility treatment, but said in a joint statement that “ideally, this should take place in their home country.”

They urged national health authorities to try to harmonize standards to increase the safety of patients and offer equal treatment for all those who want it.

“The variation in international laws relating to infertility treatment is one of the reasons that cause couples to seek cross-border treatment,” said Cooke. “Whilst this is unavoidable we call for international standards to ensure these patients receive consistent advice and safe treatment.”

Toxic ingredients in common soaps
Common antimicrobial soap ingredients can kill sperm and damage the female babymaking equipment – and now, a lawsuit-happy environmental group is suing the feds over it.

After all, they first proposed regulating these antimicrobial chemicals – triclosan and triclocarban – 30 years ago. They promised to act once they completed a study… but I’ll bet you can guess what happened next. They never bothered to study it.

That’s your government (not) at work.

So they ‘washed’ their hands of it, and today these completely unregulated toxic chemicals are free to go to town on your endocrine system, reproductive system, and more every single time you lather up.

The group that filed the suit, the National Resources Defense Council, is the same organization that recently sued the feds over their lack of regulations on BPA. The FDA’s bureaucrats may do a whole lot of nothing, but the agency’s lawyers sure are keeping busy.

Don’t wait for the lawyers, bureaucrats, and environmental groups to sort this one out, because while these things might be bad news for people, fish and sperm, they’re not exactly terrorizing bacteria. Studies have found that antimicrobial soaps are actually no better at killing germs than the plain old soap – and the FDA has even admitted as much.

What’s more, the overuse of these soaps is helping to create drug-resistant superbugs… and boy do we overuse them: Triclosan residue is believed to be on 75 percent of Americans over the age of 6.

So do yourself and the rest of us a favor: Keep clean… but stick to plain old soap.

Well, well, well – it looks like the mainstream has accidentally stumbled upon the truth that skin cancer might be caused by something other than the sun. Researchers have found that some strains of HPV, a common sexually acquired virus, can dramatically increase your skin cancer risk.Read the full story.

Snake Venom Studies Yield Insights

for Development of Therapies

for Heart Disease and Cancer

Science(July 30, 2010) — Researchers seeking to learn more about stroke by studying how the body responds to toxins in snake venom are releasing new findings that they hope will aid in the development of therapies for heart disease and, surprisingly, cancer.

The Japanese team is reporting in a Journal of Biological Chemistry “Paper of the Week” that they are optimistic that inhibiting a protein found on the surface of blood cells known as platelets may combat both irregular blood clotting and the spread of certain cancers throughout the body.

“The finding that platelets not only play a role in blood clotting but also in the development of vessels that allow tumors to flourish was quite unexpected and paves the way for new research on the role or roles of platelets,” says Katsue Suzuki-Inoue, the associate professor at the University of Yamanashi who oversaw the 13-person team’s work in professor Yukio Ozaki’s laboratory.

About platelets, blood clots and stroke

Under normal conditions, platelets are activated to become sticky when blood vessels are injured, and their clumping together (aggregation or clotting) naturally stops bleeding. But, irregular platelet aggregation caused by disease can lead to dangerous clots or even stroke if a clot clogs or bursts in a vessel that carries oxygen and nutrients to the brain.

“When a blood clot, or thrombus, forms during the body’s normal repair process, it’s doing its job,” says Suzuki-Inoue. “But, thrombotic diseases, such as heart attack and stroke, are leading causes of death in developed countries. Understanding and manipulating the underlying chemical reactions could help us save many lives.”

But what does this have to do with snake venom? It’s sort of a long story.

How venom can prevent or cause clotting

“Snake venom contains a vast number of toxins that target proteins in platelets,” says Yonchol Shin, an associate professor at Kogakuin University who specializes in snake toxins. “Some of those toxins prevent platelets from clotting, which can lead to profuse bleeding in snake bite victims. Others, like the one we’ve focused this research on, potently activate platelets, which results in blood clots. Identification of the molecular targets of many of these toxins has made an enormous contribution to our understanding of platelet activation and related diseases.”

Intrigued by the then-recent discovery that elements in snake venom can promote irregular aggregation of platelets — the kind that leads to clots and stroke — Inoue’s and Ozaki’s team set out in 1997 to understand better the molecular underpinnings of those chemical reactions. They hoped that whatever they learned could be applied to the search for new therapies for irregular blood clotting caused by disease.

In 2000, another set of investigators came across a protein on the surface of platelets and dubbed it C-type lectin-like receptor 2, or CLEC-2. At the time, it remained unclear how CLEC-2 was produced or what its job was, but the team suspected it was worth further study.

After six years of research and collaborations with British investigators, the team in 2006 discovered how rhodocytin — a molecule purified from the venom of the Southeast Asia pit viper Calloselasma rhodastoma — binds to the CLEC-2 receptor protein on the platelet surface, spurring the platelet to clot with others like it.

Then, in another JBC “Paper of the Week” in 2007, Suzuki-Inoue and her colleagues reported how a separate molecule, called podoplanin, binds to the CLEC-2 platelet receptor protein very much like the venom molecule does. Discovered in 1990, podoplanin is a protein expressed on the surface of cancer cells, and, when bound to the CLEC-2 receptor on platelets, it spurs blood clotting, too.

“To shield themselves from the immune system, cancer cells send out a chemical, podoplanin, which binds to the CLEC-2 receptor protein on platelets, telling the platelets to get together and form a protective barrier around the cancer cells. Once enveloped, the cancer cells are not detected by the immune system and are able to bind to blood vessels’ inner linings and spread, or metastasize, throughout the body,” she explained.

Using a mouse model, the team in 2008 showed that blocking the tumor protein podoplanin from binding with the platelet receptor protein CLEC-2 could prevent tumors from metastasizing to the lung.

From snake venom to platelets to tumors

The recent investigations by the team, published in the JBC online July 4, hinged on the generation and study of genetically engineered mouse embryos that lacked the platelet receptor protein CLEC-2. In the end, the experiments showed that CLEC-2 is not only necessary for blood clotting but also necessary for the development of a different type of vessel, specifically lymphatic vessels that carry fluid away from tissues and prevent swelling, or edema.

“During fetal development, the CLEC-2 deficiency disturbed the normal process of blood clotting and, in fact, the normal development and differentiation of blood and lymphatic vessels,” says Masanori Hirashima, an associate professor at Kobe University. “They had disorganized and blood-filled lymphatic vessels and severe swelling.”

Podoplanin, Hirashima explains, is also expressed on the surface of certain types of lymphatic cells and is known to play a role in the development of lymphatic vessels: “These findings suggest that the interaction between CLEC-2 and podoplanin in lymphatic vessels is necessary for the separation between blood vessels and lymphatic vessels.”

It has been known that tumors generate blood vessels to promote their growth, and it’s possible that the formation of lymphatic vessels also may contribute to the spread of cancer throughout the body, says Osamu Inoue, an assistant professor at the University of Yamanashi.

“We speculate that the interaction between the platelet’s CLEC-2 protein and the podoplanin molecule in lymphatic cells plays an essential role in the creation of lymphatic vessels, thereby facilitating tumor growth. If this is the case, a drug that blocks that interaction would prevent the spread of tumors through lymphatic vessels,” Inoue said.

By being deemed a “Paper of the Week,” the team’s work is categorized in the top 1 percent of papers reviewed by the JBC editorial board in terms of significance and overall importance. Other contributors included Guo Ding, Satoshi Nishimura, Kazuya Hokamura, Koji Eto, Hirokazu Kashiwagi, Yoshiaki Tomiyama, Yutaka Yatomi and Kazuo Umemura.

HPV–known for causing cervical cancer–is

emerging as the leading cause of throat cancer in

men. Should they get the vaccine too?

Martin Duffy, a Boston consultant and economist, thought he just had a sore throat. When it persisted for months, he went to the doctor and learned there was a tumor on his tonsils.

Duffy, now 70, had none of the traditional risk factors for throat cancer. He doesn’t smoke, doesn’t drink and has run 40 Boston marathons. Instead, his cancer was caused by the human papilloma virus (HPV), which is sexually transmitted and a common cause of throat and mouth cancer.

HPV tumors have a better prognosis than those caused by too many years of booze and cigarettes. But Duffy “is in the unlucky 20%” whose cancer comes back–despite rounds of chemotherapy and radiation that melted 20 more pounds off a lean 150-pound frame. Now the cancer has spread throughout his throat, making eating and talking difficult. “I made my living as a public speaker,” he says. “Now I sound like Daffy Duck.” Duffy believes he has only a few months left. “How do you tell the people you love you love them?” he asks.

Most strains of the HPV virus are harmless, but persistent infections with two HPV strains cause 70% of the 12,000 cases of cervical cancers diagnosed annually in the U.S. Other forms of the sexually transmitted virus can cause penile and anal cancer, and genital warts. The HPV throat cancer connection has emerged in just the last few years and is so new that the government doesn’t track its incidence. Researchers believe it is transmitted via oral sex. But top researchers estimate that there are 11,300 HPV throat cancers each year in the U.S.–and the numbers are growing fast as people have been having more sexual partners since the 1960s. By 2015 there could be 20,000 cases. For more surprising discoveries about HPV, read here.

These big numbers have some top researchers arguing that drug makers should test whether HPV vaccines now used to prevent cervical cancer in women can also prevent throat infections in boys. Two vaccines, Gardasil from Merck ( MRK – news – people ) and Cervarix from GlaxoSmithKline ( GSK – news – people ), are approved for preventing cervical cancer. Gardasil is approved for use in boys only to prevent genital warts.

// Vaccinating boys could stop this meteoric increase in throat cancer. “Clearly, boys need to be vaccinated,” says Marshall Posner, the incoming medical director of head and neck cancer at Mt. Sinai Medical Center in New York. “I want my kids to be vaccinated. I don’t see a downside to these vaccines.”

There’s only one problem: The vaccine manufacturers aren’t terribly hot on the idea. GlaxoSmithKline says it has no plans to study throat cancer. It adds that it is “committed to providing a vaccine specifically designed to protect against cervical cancer in girls and young women.”

Merck, the maker of Gardasil, seemed more interested a couple of years ago. In 2008 it funded Maura Gillison, the Ohio State University researcher who established the HPV-throat-cancer link in 2000, to do a pilot study to show that test could reliably detect HPV infection in the throat. The pilot study was successful. By early 2009 Gillison says that a larger study of the vaccine in throat cancer looked close to being green lit.

But after Merck agreed to buy rival Schering-Plough ( SGP – news – people ) for $41 billion in March 2009, interest in a big study seemed to evaporate, Gillison says. In a statement, Merck says that “due to competing research and business priorities, we decided not to move ahead with an efficacy study at this time.”

The drug makers’ reticence probably stems from a fear that a throat-cancer vaccine would be hard to get approved. Papilloma viruses usually cause cancer slowly, causing pre-cancerous lesions that take many years to blossom into full-fledged malignant tumors. Papilloma viruses cause the horn-like growths in rabbits that probably gave rise to myths of “jackalopes” in the American West. In the cervix, early abnormal growths can be picked up with a diagnostic test, the Pap smear. Clinical trials of Gardasil and Cervarix took advantage of this, measuring the number of pre-cancerous growths prevented by the vaccines.

But there are no easy-to-detect pre-cancers in the throat. Adolescent boys would have to be followed for decades to to see if the vaccine prevented throat cancer, an unlikely scenario. Short of this, studies could only look at the prevention of HPV throat infections, not cancer or cancer precursors directly. Approving a vaccine for wide use based on this type of short-term data would require a leap of faith that the Food and Drug Administration might not be willing to take.

Top researchers say the federal government needs to step in and fund the long study if drug companies cannot be persuaded to do it themselves. “I’m sorry Merck decided not to do it,” says Posner. “But in the end, this is a federal responsibility. It’s a public health issue.”

For his part, Martin Duffy thinks that drug companies’ complacent attitude toward throat cancer would be different if more of their employees were in his situation. “It will change real fast,” he says, “if one of their executives comes down with this disease.”

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